David Brooks and the "Neoconservatives"

I think David Brooks really is starting to lose it. His latest variation on the criticizing-Bush-is-hate-speech theme is that even talking about the influential group of foreign policy theorists known as "neoconservatives" is anti-Semitic. (The Era of Distortion New York Times 01/06/05)

While Republicans like Brooks are claiming to be high-mindededly opposing bigotry, others like the hack columnist Cal Thomas are working a lower road, grumbling that that Dr. Howard Dean can't be much of a Christian since he has a Jewish wife and his kids were raised Jewish.

And, of course, there's the man who President Bush calls a "national treasure," the racist junkie Rush Limbaugh, and his various imitators and competitors on rightwing talk radio who spew out bile on a nonstop basis.

I'll refer again to my December post linking to several articles on "neoconservatives." Yes, there are rightwingers who view American foreign policy as controlled by some kind of Jewish conspiracy. But Jew-haters thought that long before anyone ever heard of the current group known as neoconservatives. Pat Buchanan was griping during the Gulf War of the first Bush Administration that the war was a Jewish plot - and the "realists" were dominating policy then, not the neocons.

Neoconservatives are an influential group of foreign policy thinkers, several of whom hold significant positions in the Bush Administration. If someone doesn't have some understanding of their ideas, it's hard to see how you could meaningfully participate in a discussion over current US foreign policy.

Which is probably the point. Brooks' current column is so frivolous, I'm hesitant to quote from it at all. But here's a sample: "If you ever read a sentence that starts with 'Neocons believe,' there is a 99.44 percent chance everything else in that sentence will be untrue."

Poor Brooks. Maybe he worried he was getting honorable mention from too many liberals, and he's out to prevent that from happening again.